Marine Lt. Col. Michael Ries has donned this "hokey" homemade devil costume every year that he's raced at the Marine Corps Marathon since 2004.
WASHINGTON — Speak of the devil.
When Marine Lt. Col. Michael Ries decided to paint his body red, don a black cape and set of horns, and carry a pitchfork, he was doing it for humor’s sake more than anything else. In fact, it still remains unclear exactly why Ries picked the devil as his alter ego.
“Just so we’re completely sure, there’s nothing satanic or any of that going on,” he said.
It all started when Ries heard about then-Vice President Al Gore running the Marine Corps Marathon in 1997. He decided that if Gore could do it, so could he. The following year he ran his first MCM. That time, he wore basic running gear.
Then in 2004, the MCM happened to fall right on Halloween.
“And I thought, I should dress up, right?”
So Ries went to a Halloween store in Washington, bought some red paint, a child’s Batman cape, two tiny red horns and a kid’s devil tail. He’s been wearing the get-up every year since.
It’s hokey, it’s homemade, and it wouldn’t withstand close inspection, according to Ries. The trick, he said, was finding a costume that would still allow him to be comfortable running and not make him a heat casualty. When he’s sweating, the paint runs a little bit, he said.
At this year’s race, though, which took place on Oct. 30, heat probably wasn’t the issue. When the marathon started at 8 a.m., the temperature was a frigid 34 degrees. The more than 30,000 runners lining up at the start line could see their breath, and cold refreshments didn’t seem appealing.
But spectator comments, which run the gamut at the MCM, helped encourage Ries to keep going, he said.
“Go Satan!”
“Run, you Devil!”
“Sometimes people get a little stunned look on their face when they’re cheering for that,” he laughed.
Ries, who registers at the MCM under the name “Prince of Darkness”, finished last week’s race just before noon, with a running time of 3 hours, 52 minutes. He said wearing the costume acts as motivation: It entertains the crowds and it helps motivate some of the other runners.
“And to be honest, I like it, too. It helps me run the marathon.”
A 20-year active-duty Marine, Ries doesn’t exactly seem like a jokester.
“To look at him you wouldn’t think he’d be very goofy,” Tami Faram, public relations coordinator for the Marine Corps Marathon, said. “But it turns out he has a really good sense of humor.”
Ries agreed. “Life is serious enough. Every now and then you have to have a little fun.”
“[My kids] probably think I’m a little strange. I’d probably venture to say that a lot of my peers probably think it’s a little strange,” Ries said. “But you know, you can’t take life too seriously all the time.”
It was actually the sternness of the military that got Ries interested in joining the Marines as a teenager. Born in Germany with a father in the Foreign Service, Ries found himself awed by the professionalism of the Marine security guards at the embassies.
“They just seemed to know what they were doing, they were squared away,” he said. “They were confident. They were all of those things that marines generally are.”
He went to the College of William and Mary and then attended Officer Commissioning School, which lived up to all his expectations. He joined the Marines at 22.
“When I graduated I felt like I had achieved something,” Ries said. “I got commissioned in the Marine Corps and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Ries, now 42, lives in D.C. working on a fellowship for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The fellowship involves learning how USAID and the Marine Corps can work together to strengthen national security. In his words, the idea of the fellowship is that “preventing war is better than fighting war.”
So will we see Beelzebub at next year’s marathon? Ries said he’s not sure.
“Every year I say I’m not doing that again, that’s my last marathon,” he said. “And then every year I sign up again. We’ll have to see.”
If he does run again, he knows he needs to be prepared.
“There’s no excuses when you’re standing out like that,” he said. After all, you can’t quit if you’re a devil.